Gemma Hallett final report

I was thrilled to be selected as the Castan Centre Global Intern at Human Rights First (HRF) in New York City. The opportunity to work at a leading American law and policy organisation, in a global hub of human rights law and policy, at a crucial time for global and U.S. politics was unparalleled. Having spent three months in New York working full-time within the Refugee Representation team, I gained in-depth legal and political knowledge, a rejuvenated commitment to working for the benefit of those most vulnerable, and a broader perspective on the global challenges facing people seeking asylum in the twenty-first century.

My day-to-day work at HRF was mostly centred on client casework. HRF’s model is that people seeking asylum are referred to HRF (or find it themselves), and we interview the client thoroughly to determine their needs. The team leaders then determine which clients have the most urgent and credible claims to asylum, and usually then match the client with a pro bono legal team from another firm which HRF lawyers supervise and mentor. This model means that much of what I did at HRF was sit in on client intake interviews, take detailed notes, and write up a formal document detailing that person’s life story and facts about their country that support their claims. This is, of course, an incredibly intimate task that required a good deal of patience, empathy, intercultural understanding and sensitivity. Sitting in on interviews greatly developed these client-facing skills, and reminded me just how important it is to spend time with the real people at the centre of your work.

One of the most interesting parts of this day-to-day work was the opportunity to learn more about the countries from which our clients had fled. To persuade the U.S. government that the client has a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion…and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”, I was responsible for researching and summarising country conditions news and reports. This was a fascinating way to learn about the current political and social realities in places I’d never studied before, including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tajikistan, South Sudan, Mexico, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Ukraine, and Syria. Personally, some of the most interesting cases and research areas were our LGBTIQ+ clients. Researching the situation for these communities in Ukraine, Tunisia and Jamaica was a confronting yet important insight into how far LGBTIQ+ rights have to come in our world.

In addition to client casework, I was occasionally tasked with legal research tasks. My supervisors, often grappling with legal issues for particular clients but unable to devote hours to researching the answer, had high expectations of my research skills and ability to quickly pick up on complex principles of U.S. immigration and constitutional law. Some of the points I researched included: whether witnesses to crimes constitute a “particular social group” in the U.S.; whether a moot or incorrect finding of terrorism-related bar to entry can be re-examined during a later application for permanent residency; and whether termination of U.S. asylum proceedings can be obtained without a 10-year re-application bar for a client who decided to instead seek asylum in Canada. Although it was really challenging to get my head around the differences in U.S. and Australian legal terminology, it was reassuring to find that the legal research skills I’ve learned in my Law degree are applicable on the other side of the world – and it turns out we even use the same Lexis databases.

Outside of my day-to-day work, I had some exciting highlights. The first was that a long-term Syrian client, who had been detained in New Jersey for 16 months (almost unheard of in the U.S., but frighteningly common in Australia), was finally released after tireless advocacy from HRF. The client’s Arabic-speaking casework lawyer drove to the detention centre, picked him up, brought him back to the office and we all had a celebration lunch together. This was a real moment of joy amidst several weeks of uncertainty and immigration policy changes under the new Trump administration. Another unexpected highlight was the opportunity to practice my French. None of the refugees I’d worked with in Melbourne spoke French, as most are from Asia and the Middle East. In contrast, the U.S. is a popular destination for many French-speaking African refugees. I was asked to translate documents and converse with clients in French, which was a fun and timely reminder that I should continue to work on my language skills over the coming years given the demand for French and English speakers in the human rights field.

During my internship, I learned so much that I would have never picked up if not for the opportunity to work and live internationally. For one, given the timing of my internship – Donald Trump’s inauguration fell in the middle of my three months, followed by the refugee and “Muslim ban” – I learned first-hand some important lessons on how to work at times of political and social crisis (I wrote about this in the Castan Centre blog). Because of the political climate, and the inherently politicised nature of refugee work, I also learned a lot about the U.S. political and legislative system, something I’d never had the chance to study in my Arts and Law degrees. The U.S. context also enabled me to gain a deep understanding of the regional issues contributing to flows of refugees into the country: predominantly the drug trade operating in and out of the “Northern Triangle” of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where the bulk of HRF’s clients originate and a region that I knew almost nothing about before I started my internship.

I will always be grateful to the Castan Centre for trusting me to represent the Centre, Monash, and Australia in New York. Without the Castan Centre’s commitment to enabling students to access international opportunities like this, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the living costs associated with the unpaid internship, nor access the contacts and organisations to make it happen. I am so privileged to have been granted the opportunity to work at HRF assisting those fleeing persecution, in a city that’s one of the world’s great hubs for human rights law. My internship experience – the people and role models I met, the places I visited, and the legal work I completed – has definitely cemented my desire to work for the benefit of the community in my legal career. Thank you to the Castan Centre, its generous donors, and Monash University for this experience and the privilege of embarking on my career as a human rights advocate-in-the-making.